


30 Cheesy Tropes

by TheoMiller



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble Collection, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 18:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: 30 Tropes for Fisk/Michael, some kinda gen, some pre-relationship, some just shippy. Also fusions involved.





	1. fake relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus private detective au

“Fisk!” Michael called, as he unhooked True’s leash and hung it on the coat rack. “I found us a client.”

“You found us a client at the dog park?” said Fisk. A moment later, he poked his head up from behind the stack of files. “A _paying_ client?” he said.

Michael rolled his eyes at his partner’s unwavering pragmatism, but nodded. “Yes, and yes. You remember the Makejoyes, right?”

“They run the club-bar hybrid where Ruby does entertainment,” said Fisk promptly. “What were they doing at the dog park?”

“They – or, well, their daughter and son-in-law – have eight dogs.”

“ _Eight_?” Fisk asked, horrified.

Tipple, Fisk’s cat, meowed as if in agreement from where she was sprawled across an open file folder, shedding like mad.

“Eight,” confirmed Michael.

Fisk shook his head. “So, aside from paying for carpet cleaning on a semi-regular basis, can they afford to pay us our going rate?”

Michael grinned triumphantly at his partner. “ _Plus_ risk pay,” he said.

“Whoa, hang on,” Fisk said, a distinct note of fear creeping into his voice. “Risk pay? As in, OSHA would strongly advise any sane person against taking the job sort of risk pay?”

“It’s not the first time we’ve dealt with murderers, Fisk. We're PI's.”

“Yeah, but, if this is anything like our usual stuff, you wouldn’t agree to risk pay. So, what is it? Cannibalism? Michael, I swear to the gods, if it’s cannibalism, we’re moving to Florida and opening a florist shop, I have dealt with rabid animals and mad scientists and arson and actual, literal _pirates_ , but I draw the line at cannibalism.”

Michael waited patiently for him to finish. “It’s just a murderer who abducted a gay couple. We don’t even know if it’s a serial killer yet, they’ve only found the first couple. The second couple’s still missing. For all we know, they ran off to Atlantic City and got married.”

“Oh,” said Fisk. “Then why’d you accept risk pay?”

“To get you to agree to go undercover as my fiancé,” Michael said.

Fisk squinted at him. “How much money?”

“500 a day, and it goes up to 750 if the second couple is found dead, or another two go missing.”

“Okay,” said Fisk. “On one condition.”

“Anything,” said Michael, just to annoy Fisk. He’d gotten several lectures on why saying _anything_ during a negotiation is the most ridiculous thing he could possibly do.

“Don’t tell my sister.”


	2. superhero au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's an au where michael has powers he can control and fisk has a supernatural gift of persuasion.

“I don’t have time for this,” Fisk sighed, checking his watch.

Michael gave him a sardonic look. “Oh, _now_ you’re rushing to get home?”

“Oh, excuse me if I’d rather be cooking dinner for my sisters than be held hostage for a few hours without so much as a book. Who takes hostages in a grocery store, anyway?”

“Let’s find out,” said Michael, and Fisk hesitated. Michael rolled his eyes. “Yes, we can beg out of cooking and order pizza for tonight if we're involved in a hostage situation.”

“Okay, I’m in, let’s do this. Wait. My sisters don't know we're superheroes, can't we still plead emotional distress if the police do it themselves and we don't risk our lives and secret identities?”

Michael drew breath, probably gearing up for a  _moral imperative_ speech. Fisk held up a hand to stem the flow of the familiar words.

“Fine, fine. We're heroes, we help."

"Thank you." Michael radiated smugness.

"Okay, come on, hop up,” Fisk said, and laced his hands together to give Michael a leg up so he could see over the shelves. “Ugh, you’re so heavy,” Fisk bitched, even though Michael was distributing his weight onto the top of the shelves. How can you be so heavy? C’mon, what do you see?”

Michael hopped back down. “You didn’t take that grand opportunity to ask me what my elf eyes see?”

“You’re too heavy to be an elf,” said Fisk.

“But I’m pretty enough, right?”

“Just tell me what we’re looking at here, dumbass.”

“Three perps, submachine guns with limited ammo, no police lights. We’ve got one keeping the hostages under control while another two sweep the aisles for the rest. We’re two aisles away from the nearest one.”

“Where the hell are the cops?” Fisk asked.

Michael frowned and pulled out his cell phone. “No signal.”

“Jammer?”

“Multiple ones, probably.”

“All right, _Merlin_ , you get to go play crowd control while I try to disable as many jammers as possible.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Michael, bristling at the nickname, “I’ll turn myself invisible and call the cops. You get in with the perps, keep the hostages calm, and get everyone to cover if there’s a firefight. Deal?”

“If you get me shot, I’ll kill you.”

Michael flashed him a thumbs up and poked his head out of the aisle. The gunman on the far side of the store spotted him, and Michael turned invisible faster than you can say “abracadabra”. Fisk reached out to brush his fingers over Michael’s arm, always curious about the magic, and then Michael was moving away and Fisk came out with his hands up.

The nearest gunman frowned at Fisk, but made the mistake of meeting his eyes, and Fisk leaned forward, layering persuasion into his voice. "I'm just another hostage," he said. "Just another person. You can trust me. I'm unarmed, see?"

He blinked, and then gestured sharply at Fisk. "Get with the other hostages!"

"Of course," Fisk said. He broke eye contact with a barely stifled sigh of relief. The civilians were looking askance at him, probably wondering what the hell he'd turned himself over to the crazy men with guns for. Not for the first time, he wished he could project his persuasions, because every single one of Michael's plans looked goddamn insane from the outside.


	3. stripper au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fisk is a stripper, michael is a bouncer.

The night air was just this side of cold enough for Michael to see his breath as he stepped outside onto the metal grate of the back door. Fisk was perched on the railings, looking bored as he exhaled a cloud of vaguely clove-smelling water vapor.

He startled a little at Michael's appearance, but then relaxed again, and for a moment they were both silent, both exhaling in little plumes for different reasons.

"You know, those are still addictive,” Michael said finally, and Fisk laughed. “They are!”

“A lot of things are addictive, sir knight. Nicotine is one of the safer ones.”

“I know you’re making fun of me when you call me that, but I’m actually rather fond of the idea of being a knight," said Michael. He squinted at the horizon, trying to decide if the faint light was starlight or neon signs.

The idea was warming to him more and more. Open roads. Horses, gods, he _missed_ horses. A sword straight out of a movie. And of course, Fisk at his side, rolling his eyes and tossing back a casual rejoinder to their latest argument.

"Maybe a knight errant, wandering the land doing good deeds and protecting people... You could be my faithful squire.”

Fisk flicked the e-cigarette off and glanced around them, which was usually a pretty good clue he was going to say something nice; he always made sure no-one could hear him being nice. “We’re not just teasing you," he said. "We know you’ll keep us safe. It’s why Gwen hired you. Now, get inside, I’m up in five.”

He patted his impossibly tight jeans, like he was hoping to find a pocket suitable for it somehow, even though the pockets looked painted on.

“Give it to me,” Michael said finally, “I’ll keep it in my jacket pocket.”

 “Promise you’ll give it back, Sir Michael?” he asked.

“I promise,” said Michael. He did his best not to read into the fact that Fisk gave him the cursed thing without further hesitation. He tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket, then straightened the jacket self-consciously and nodded to Fisk.

“What a hero,” Fisk teased, and went back inside.

Michael followed.


	4. spin the bottle au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> technically this is... every drunk idiot game of chance EXCEPT spin the bottle, but the result is the same.

Fisk, in the years later, would blame Judith. Judith would privately agree that this was indeed one of the few instances where she could and ought to be blamed – not that she could complain, given the amount of blackmail material she held from those college years.

It’s Fisk’s sophomore year of college, and he’s mildly tipsy, and she’s a bit (a lot) more than mildly tipsy, and somehow Judith ended up playing a rather adult version of truth-or-dare with a bunch of half-drunk idiots that happen to include her kid brother. “Truth or dare, little brother?” Judith crows, when Fisk finally ends up on the wrong end of the bottle.

“Just do truth,” says Michael, who’s been going through the motions of the game with a long-suffering air of maturity.

Fisk narrows his eyes at Judith, then, “Nah, can’t, knowledge is power. Dare.”

“All right,” Judith says, and then she practically cackles as something positively wicked occurs to her.

“Should’ve done truth,” Michael sing-songs.

“For your dare, you have to make out with Michael. No objections, Fisk, you chose dare fair and square.”

There’s a pause, and then Michael says, “Can _I_ object?”

“Guys, let’s take a vote, can Michael object?” asks Judith.

The unanimous decision was that Michael could not, in fact, object, and that objecting made him a total fucking drag. (A couple of the more trashed guys decided it was ‘totally gay’ if Michael refused to make out with Fisk, which Judith couldn’t quite fathom the logic of and thus didn’t bother arguing the point.)

“C’mon, don’t do this to the dude,” Fisk says, “he’s, like, scared of sex, he’s probably never kissed anyone.”

“I’m not scared of sex, Fisk!”

“You go all red whenever I talk about how hot Professor Boniface is, okay, you’re like a unicorn. Blushing virgin or some shit.”

“Wow, how articulate,” Michael sneers back at him, because they’re actual literal five year olds. If five year olds got drunk and made out at parties.

Fisk jabs a finger against Michael’s chest. “Okay, then, prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“Prove you’re not afraid of sex.”

“Gay chicken!” yells someone, possibly one of the aforementioned guys with a limited understanding of the word gay, and the vote on that is unanimous too.

Michael shrugs somewhat stiffly. “Okay,” he says. “What are the rules?”

“You gotta be, like, super gay with each other,” says a rather enthusiastic chick, “and the first one to chicken out loses.”

“What about privacy?” Fisk asks, with a purposefully lecherous eyebrow waggle, and Judith mimes gagging.

Michael’s fiercely competitive, and his eyes are glinting as he reaches out and grabs Fisk’s hand. “Haven’t you ever heard of Seven Minutes In Heaven, _babe_?”

After that, Judith completely washes her hands of the matter. What happens behind closed doors is entirely Fisk’s fault.


	5. werewolf au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently vampire au is the norm here but we're an odd little fandom, here's a teen wolf fusion

Someone is blasting Jay Z's "99 Problems" as they drive down Fisk's street. This is unacceptable for several reasons. One, it's ten am, and Fisk most emphatically _does not_ get out of bed until noon. Two, even if it were past noon, it would be unacceptable because _it's not 2003 anymore_. And three, Fisk wishes he had 99 problems. That would be a soothing, refreshing vacation from his life.

Fisk has a lot more than 99 problems, and most of them are werewolves.

Because not only did Michael, who is Fisk's Number One Problem, get bitten by a werewolf, he also developed Special Magical Werewolf Powers, which are special even among werewolves, who already have Werewolf Powers.

And it turns out that a lot of evil werewolves and morally grey werewolves and chaotic neutral werewolves really, really want to use Michael for his Special Magical Werewolf Powers. And Michael is disinclined to be used.

And Michael, because he is a werewolf and werewolves are weird, needed a pack. Complete with Werewolf Power Pack Bonds, that mostly seem to include sniffing Fisk, and nuzzling, and puppy piles of cuddling werewolves _in Fisk's bed_.

Which leads to the other problems: Michael's pack. There's Michael's sister – human. And Fisk's sister Judith – human – and Fisk's other sister – werewolf. And Rosamund – banshee – and her boyfriend Rudy – werewolf – and then a hoard of no less than six teenagers – all werewolves – plus another teenager – human.

So. An incomplete list of Fisk's problems:

  1. Michael freaking Sevenson, stupidly noble idiot.
  2. Werewolves exist, which should really count as, like, twenty problems on its own.
  3. Special Magical Werewolf Powers, which basically mean Michael is an especially noble Stupidly Noble Idiot.
  4. Werewolf Powers, ie, teeth and claws and glowing eyes and _athleticism_.
  5. Werewolf Power Pack Bonds. Which are just creepy, and touchy-feely.
  6. Her existence, _plus_ being forced to work with her. It's the worst, because she's the worst.
  7. His baby sister is a werewolf, and if Anna ever finds out, he is so dead. So, so dead.
  8. Kathy Sevenson, because as much as Fisk likes her, he doesn't want to be killed by her father or her mother, both of whom hate werewolves and have lots of guns, and Fisk can't heal, thank-you-very-much.
  9. Rosamund, who is too pretty for anyone to remain level headed except for Fisk, and then there's the whole "calls at obscene hours of the morning and night because she's woken out of a trance state beside a dead body _again_ ".
  10. Dead bodies. That should definitely be up there, Fisk is so goddamned tired of dead bodies.
  11. He didn't like himself as a teenager, and he doesn't like teenagers now that he's an adult. They're horny, and whiny, and rush off into danger.
  12. There's a goddamned car playing outdated rap music at absurd volumes at ten-freaking-am.



Fisk rolls over and checks his phone, because there's no way he can go back to sleep now that he's awake.

There are five texts from Hannibas, the only human teenager, who is remarkably normal aside from his awful given name, which actually seems to be a common theme in Beacon Hills. Because Fisk's given name – well, he can relate.

_From: Hannibas  
Wake up. Michael needs to see you. It's urgent._

_From: Hannibas  
He won't say why until you're here and he's pacing and it's making everyone nervous._

_From: Hannibas  
Kathy's flipping out._

_From: Hannibas  
Dammit, Fisk, wake up before Michael has an aneurysm._

_From: Hannibas  
I tried to stop him, but it's really your fault._

Fisk is trying to make sense of that last text with his barely-awake brain when his window slides open and a dark shape tumbles into his room.

"JESUS H CHRIST," Fisk yells, and scrambles back. His phone falls between his nightstand and his bed, and he hits his head on the lamp, which falls over, and he grabs the knife from his bedside drawer. And then he promptly feels like an idiot.

"You weren't answering your phone," Michael says, like that's an acceptable reason to come through a man's window while he's sleeping – not that Michael doesn't spend most of his time in Fisk's apartment, usually after entering through the window, but that's when Fisk's fully awake and can know it's Michael without turning around. "There's a pack meeting."

Fisk groans, because they've had this discussion. "Pack meetings after _noon_ , Michael, c'mon, some of us need sleep."

"Not an option," Michael says.

"What's so urgent?" asks Fisk, immediately suspicious. Michael's had "pack meetings" before where it turns out the emergency is that no-one's scent-marked Fisk in a while. He did mention that Werewolf Power Pack Bonds are weird as hell, right?

Michael's face gets pinched. Then, "What do you know about pooka?"

Addendum to the list: Mythological goddamn creatures in Fisk's goddamn hometown like he's stepped into Sunnydale.


	6. magic spell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyone else seen practical magic? no? ok.

**i.**

Michael’s parents never loved each other.

It’s a fact, one his parents had always been quite open about, because of the curse: if anyone dared love a Sevenson, then death would follow, too early and too sudden, preceded only by an omen, in the form of a pure white butterfly. Not a _Pieris rapae_ , or _Pieris brassicae_ , or _Pontida protodice_ , or _Morpho Polyphemus_ , or _Ascia monuste_ or any other species known to science.

It hardly inspired romance. So no, Roland and Anita Sevenson had not loved each other. Anita wanted children, and Roland wanted heirs – theirs was a marriage of mutual benefit, not love. But they did enjoy one aspect of their partnership, and Michael did not lack in siblings.

Rupert, the eldest, was in love with the idea of being exactly like their father. (Benton yelled things about Oedipal complexes when they had bitter, vicious arguments over petty things in puberty. Rupert generally replied with a suggestion as to where Benton could shove his outdated psych textbooks.)

Benton, for his part, was in love with his books. And maybe the pretty librarian at the university, but he never quite worked up the nerve to speak to her, so no one ever worried about her following in much the same way their various aunts and uncles by marriage had gone (or their biological relatives, who died of broken hearts and alcoholism and suicidal recklessness and, in the case of their grandfather, syphilis.)

Michael and Kathy were the youngest, both by a few years, so love of anything but Sunday cartoons and late night brownies hadn’t quite entered into the equation when Justin fell in love.

He was sixteen, the second oldest, right between Benton (scarcely fifteen) and Rupert (seventeen-and-three-quarters). The girl Justin fell in love with was sixteen too, though it hardly mattered. She was doomed anyway.

In the middle of what had to be the fiftieth shouting match – wherein Justin maintained that his love for Chelsea would break the curse, and Roland Sevenson reminded him that nearly all of their various family members had said the same, albeit in much louder and expletive-laced terms – Michael was in the kitchen, just trying to get a bowl of cereal. He was eleven, and Kathy was eight, and they were going to play hide and seek with Rosamund from next door.

And Justin stopped dead.

Time seemed to crawl as they all turned to look at what had caught his gaze. Michael dropped the milk carton. (No one noticed.) Slowly, Benton and Rupert and Kathy and even their mother filed in, because nothing was more surprising than silence these days, and all of them, even little Kathy, know what it means.

Because outside, on their mother’s prized rose trellis, is a butterfly as white as the milk slowly seeping across the linoleum.

 

**ii.**

The bell on the door to the shop rang, and Michael looked dumbly at the blank space where an adult would normally be before noticing the girl below. “Miss Wendy!” he said, with a smile. “Where’s your mother?”

“Mr. Worthington needed her early at work today,” she told him, in a voice that implied he should’ve known this.

“All right, then, what can I help you with?”

“Stick candy,” she announced, and then frowned. “I mean, can I buy some stick candy, please?”

Michael’s coworker, Nettie’s Ma, had made the candy herself, with maybe the teensiest bit of magic so that the candy would brighten the person’s entire day. Having sworn off magic, Michael wasn’t entirely sure if he was happy about that casual use of magical influence on unsuspecting children. But it did no harm, so he couldn’t exactly demand she stop. So he swallowed his qualms and said, “Which flavor, Miss Wendy?”

“Root beer!”

“Tell you what,” he said, as he got a brown paper bag, “if you promise to brush your teeth so you don’t get cavities, I’ll slip an extra one in for free.”

“You’re really nice for a witch!” said Wendy.

He didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. “50 cents,” he said, almost robotically, as he held out a hand for the money. Wendy dropped two slightly sticky quarters into his palm before snatching the bag away and sweeping away.

“Brush your teeth!” Michael called after her.

Leonna hesitated on her stepstool, and then abandoned the tubs of eucalyptus-and-spearmint chest rub that still needed shelved to come join Michael behind the counter. “Hey,” she said. She rested her hand on Michael’s wrists, pausing him in his efforts to put the coins in the cash register while the shame stopped burning on his cheeks and in his chest. “I know you don’t practice, which I think is something of a mistake,” she said, and he shrugged her off.

“I don’t want to have this argument again, Lee.”

“Neither do I, all right, my _point_ is, there’s nothing wrong with being born into magic. And all those people who whisper about us behind our backs, the people who show up drunk to town meetings and suggest we bring back burnings, they conveniently forget that your family founded this town. That your family heals their children, and makes houses a teensy bit more fireproof, and that they’re the ones who burned your ancestors alive, the ones who killed innocents, _not us_.”

“Leonna,” he said. “Those ancestors as good as killed Chelsea Dale. And Aunt Millie, and Uncle Vince, and gods know how many people, all the way back to the 18th century.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” she shrugged, and then swatted him with her apron. “Go finish shelving, and then get home. I know your sister’s coming back today.”

Michael beamed.

 

**iii.**

When Kathy was ten, she met Meg and Other Rupert. There were two Ruperts, Brother Rupert and Other Rupert, which was really just unfortunate all around, because _Rupert_? But after a while, when Brother Rupert went away to college, and then moved to South Carolina (or South Dakota, or North Dakota, or West Virginia, or—somewhere with a direction in the name), Other Rupert became just Rupert. Which was still a tragedy of a name, but at least it was less confusing.

When she was thirteen, she snuck into Michael’s room after their parents went to bed.

It wasn’t unusual for Kathy to do this – she’d always hated how big and empty her room was, had always preferred to be around other people, probably because she’d inherited their father’s ability to read people in a way that would really make life easier if Michael had won that genetic lottery – but it was unusual for her to come without a book, because she usually read until she fell asleep and Michael carried her back to her own room.

Michael set his copy of _The Sword in the Stone_ facedown on his stomach and waited patiently for her to talk.

“I think I’m in love,” she said, and then saw the expression on his face. “No, don’t worry, it’s—she’s not—she likes boys.”

“Meg?” Michael guessed, and Kathy’s face told him everything.

He’d shifted to the side, patted the bed beside himself, and let her doze off on his shoulder while he read aloud to her from the book like they’d done when she was very small and reading so many long words at a time was a terrible chore.

She was sixteen when she told him she was in love with Rupert, too. Michael, nineteen and fiercely protective of his baby sister, felt appropriately horrified by the idea of double the chances of the curse befalling her, and she waved off his concerns.

“Don’t worry,” she’d said. “They’re too busy in love with each other to be in love with me.”

Michael had never seen heartbreak that had nothing to do with the curse before.

 

**iv.**

“Michael!” Kathy yelled, and launched herself out of her car to throw her arms around his neck.

He laughed, somewhat breathless from the mild strangulation going on, and lifted her off her feet to spin her around. “Kathy,” he said warmly. “Good to have you back.”

“It’s good to be back,” she said, her eyes earnest.

Michael managed to maneuver her and her suitcases inside before the story came tumbling out. “They’re getting married,” was the first thing she said. Somehow, this engagement had led to Kathy being set up on a blind date with a really charming guy named Jack, who turned out to be currently married, _twice_ , under different names in different states, and she’d broken it off.

Then, she’d explained, she did a bit of research (Kathy loved research the way Benton loved archeology), and discovered that a few of his aliases were wanted all over the place for his involvement in fraud.

“He must’ve figured out how rich we are,” she said, “and decided to scam me.”

“You’re too clever for that,” said Michael.

She hummed noncommittally. “I mean, obviously I didn’t _love_ him, but I thought he was—ugh. Anyway, I’m just really glad to be away from the lies and then the pity and Meg and Rupert being—” she broke off, frustrated.

“You’re happy for them, and you could never really resent them, but sometimes you wish they at least knew so they’d stop making out in front of you?” Michael supplied.

“Yeah,” she said. “So! I’ve decided to come home and work in the shop a little while. Settle down a bit. I mean, I’m twenty-three.”

“Twenty-two,” said Michael.

“Close enough.”

 

**v.**

When Michael was ten, Rosamund moved in next door. She was eight-almost-nine, and she didn’t mind if they were witches as long as they didn’t turn her into a frog, and she played outside with Michael and Kathy in ever snippet of spare time.

When Michael was fourteen, he realized he was in trouble. Rosamund had just turned thirteen that weekend, and they were walking home from school, and he said something that made her laugh and smile at him so brightly that Michael felt dizzy.

That night, Michael set out to cast a spell. Kathy followed him into the yard in her nightgown and bare feet, demanding to know what he was doing and reminding him at regular intervals that she was _eleven_ and _practically grown up_ and _ought to know_.

“I’m casting a love spell,” he said. “So I can only ever fall in love with one person.”

Kathy frowned. “I thought you never wanted to fall in love?”

“I don’t. That’s the point. So…” he squared his jaw and thought very hard about an impossible person. Then, “A _boy_ ,” he said, and plucked a flower off the peony bush, dropping it into the bowl.

Kathy sighed dramatically and folded her arms. “You can’t fall in love with a boy!”

“With dark skin,” he said, peeling a piece of copper-tinged brown bark off the cedar tree, “but freckles,” he said, and tossed a handful of sand in too.

“M _iiii_ chael, it’s cold! Come inside, we can talk about this.”

“And eyes as green as green sea glass,” said Michael. He took his time choosing the right shade of leaf to add this time. “Who reads the boring parts of books, like the editor’s note and the introduction.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a page that had fallen out of his beleaguered copy of _Perceval, the story of the Grail_. He folded it up neatly, all the fraying edges lined up, and then into the bowl it went.

“But he’s funny, too.”

Michael placed a larkspur flower on top of the folded page and said, solemnly, “This is the only person I can ever love.” When he lifted the bowl up to the moons, the contents caught fire. Kathy resorted to trying to shove Michael into the house, but stopped when she saw the faint lines of ash drift away on the wind.

“You cast it,” she said. “You cursed yourself!”

“No,” said Michael. “I saved myself.” And then he went back inside.


End file.
